As a backyard birder, I stick to my claim that the best way to attract birds to your yard is with fresh water. This is true summer and winter.
Obviously, birds are attracted to heated water sources in the winter when the temperature drops below freezing and water is not available, but our fine-feathered friends are also drawn to baths in the summer.
Birds, unlike five-year old boys, like to take baths. They love a shallow pool of fresh water to splash in and rid themselves of dirt, grime and small parasites. Robins, particularly, enjoy these luxury baths and they love it when the water is sparkling clear.
But maintaining a birdbath or two in the summer can involve multiple trips with a hose and frequent scrubbing of algae from the birdbaths. There is not much you can do about the algae, other than to clean it, but we have found an easy way to keep our birdbaths brimming full while conserving water at the same time.
We have a humidifier in our basement that draws about a gallon and a half of water from the air each day. This is the purest of pure water, no chlorine, no chemicals, just pure water. What a shame to simply dump all that water down the drain.
I keep a six-gallon “crab bucket” in the basement. We call it a crab bucket and use it for that purpose when we go to the bay, but it’s just a simple bucket that we recycled from one of our trips to Lowe’s. It occurred to me that if I dumped the humidifier water in the bucket, I could use that to help fill one of the several birdbaths we have. Sometimes I’ll wait and dump two or even three drainings from the humidifier, then take it to the back yard and fill our baths. Our birds love this water. It’s really pretty special.
We also keep an empty one-gallon plastic container near the kitchen sink. When we have to turn on the water and let it get hot, rather than wasting that water down the drain, we fill the jug, then use that for our birdbath water.
We have a wide variety of birds that frequent our back yard and it’s no accident. I feed them quality birdseed throughout the year, but equally important, I keep fresh water in our birdbaths.
If you would like to attract birds, the best way to do it is with an available supply of fresh water.